Comprehensive Description

Biology

"As this is not the place to explain the various extensions and restrictions which authors have assigned to this family name, it will be sufficient to refer to the bibliographical index in M. Jules Bonnier's admirable monograph, Contribution a I'etude des Epicarides les Bopyridae published in the year 1900, and to the discussion of this group by Professor Sars in 1898. The latter author, while highly commending the services rendered to our knowledge of the Epicaridea by MM. Giard and Bonnier in 1887 and subsequent years, raises a protest against the assumption that the mere statement of the host is sufficient to identify the parasite. He points out that ' one and the same species of Crustacea not seldom is found to be infested by several species of parasites.' So far as at present known the Bopyridae are parasitic only on decapod Malacostraca. It is a little confusing that M. Bonnier should make the Bopyridae one of the families of a section Bopyrinae, when Dr Hansen has already made the Bopyrinae one of the subfamilies of the Bopyridae." (Stebbing 1904)